Thursday's letters to the editor

Badger's decision reflects best interest of FAMU

Re: "FAMU board gave Badger too much authority" (My View, April 28).

The Rev. Charles Scriven is aggrieved that Solomon Badger, chairman of the FAMU Board of Trustees, may have acted outside the customary rules and procedures of a governing body, when the chairman temporarily suspended the search for a FAMU president.

Scriven does not present a case that the action was contrary to the best interest of the venerable institution. To my knowledge, no board member has publicly objected to the chairman's direction. Chairman Badger has explained that the institution has a number of urgent and time sensitive issues to attend to.

Above all, FAMU is not without leadership. Larry Robinson was unanimously confirmed by the trustees as the interim president.

I am supremely confident that the trustees will, in proper order, resume their search and find the right person to serve as the president of FAMU.

In this work, there is some truth and wisdom to be found in the maxim and corollary: A new broom sweeps clean, but the old broom knows the corners.

DENNIS MURPHY

dennisandconnie@hotmail.com

Reporting helped shed
light on critical health issue

As advocates for healthy babies for over two decades, the members of Capital Area Healthy Start Coalition wish to commend the Tallahassee Democrat's Jordan Culver and Jennifer Portman for the excellent series "Healthy Babies 2013."

Your in-depth analysis of this issue reiterated the point that good birth outcomes are ultimately everyone's responsibility. Our community has come a long way in the last five years. More awareness and more education of infant mortality in our community will continue to assist in this progress.

Although the vexing racial disparity still remains, infant mortality rates are going down. All segments of our society need to recognize that healthy babies are the indicator and foundation of a healthy community.

We all want a healthy community - it happens one baby at a time.

FRAN T. CLOSE

Board president

Capital Area Healthy Start Coalition

Arming everyone
is a 'Bunker' mentality

Regarding the failure of meaningful gun-control laws:

In one of the "All in the Family" sitcom episodes, during the '70s, when aircraft hijacking was at its height, Archie Bunker told his son-in-law, Mike, that the way to stop the hijackings was to arm all the passengers.

You may imagine Mike's reaction, and the audience howled because it was ludicrous, and so typical of Archie, who was never noted for his intellect.

Now, some 40 years later, we are experiencing a recrudescence of the Archie Bunker mentality, fertilized by NRA money and propaganda that expects to be taken seriously by urging that arming more of the population will make our lives safer.

What this 40-year lesson really teaches is that we are at greater risk from a lack of gun control, and it reaffirms that organizations with the political power of the NRA can effectively inhibit the function of democratic government in its efforts to respond to majority opinion.